The Photo My Old Drinking Buddy Tagged Me In
The Photo My Old Drinking Buddy Tagged Me In
RedeemedExistence daily devotional — September 26, 2026
A notification popped up on my phone Tuesday night, a tag in a photo from twelve years ago, some bar I do not even remember the name of, my arm slung around a man I used to run with back when running meant something closer to ruin than exercise. He must have been digging through an old album, feeling nostalgic about a version of himself he has apparently decided to keep. In the picture I am twenty six pounds heavier, glassy eyed, laughing at something that was probably not funny, and thirty one people had already liked it by the time I saw it. I did not comment or untag myself, though I thought about it. I just sat on the edge of my bed feeling twelve years fall away like they had never happened at all.
I have been sober long enough now that most days I do not think about who I used to be. I go to work, I coach my son's baseball team, people at church know me as the guy who runs the parking lot on Sunday mornings, and none of that is a performance. But a photo like that one has a way of reaching back through the years I have built since and putting its hand on my shoulder, and for about an hour Tuesday night I sat with a familiar feeling I thought I had outgrown, the conviction that the man in that picture is somehow more true about me than the man typing this sentence.
That feeling has a name, and it is shame, and it does not argue fair. Shame does not present evidence and let you weigh it. It declares a verdict and expects you to accept it, the way that photo declared one about me before I had even finished reading the caption. I spent years believing that verdict, certain that whatever grace I found on Sunday would eventually run out once God got a good enough look at what I actually was underneath it. Most of us are carrying some version of that photo, a memory, a mistake, a season we hope nobody brings back up, and we have quietly decided the shame attached to it gets the final word about who we really are.
Paul will not let that verdict stand. "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit" (Romans 8:1, NKJV). Notice he does not say the condemnation was reduced or postponed. He says it is gone, now, for anyone in Christ, which means the moment I trusted Him the old file was not amended, it was closed. I have spent years re-opening a case God already ruled on, as if my own memory had the authority to overturn His verdict.
David describes the actual distance involved. "As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us" (Psalm 103:12, NKJV). East and west never meet, which is a very different picture than a filing cabinet where the old record just sits there, waiting to be pulled back out by a notification on a Tuesday night. Paul says something just as final about the man in that photo. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17, NKJV). Passed away is not the same as covered up. The bar, the arm around my old friend's shoulder, the man laughing at nothing, that whole self actually passed away, and thirty one strangers liking a photo of his corpse does not resurrect him.
Here is where my own reasoning has never been strong enough to finish the job. I can recite the theology of forgiveness perfectly and still feel my stomach drop every time an old photo surfaces, because shame was never actually a logic problem I could argue my way out of. Isaiah promises something my own arguments could never manufacture on their own. "Instead of your shame you shall have double honor, And instead of confusion they shall rejoice in their portion. Therefore in their land they shall possess double; Everlasting joy shall be theirs" (Isaiah 61:7, NKJV). Double honor in place of shame is not a trade I could talk myself into. It has to be given, the way everything in this life that actually heals seems to be given rather than earned.
This is what abiding in the Spirit does that my own willpower never managed in twelve years of trying to outrun old photographs. Paul writes, "I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh" (Galatians 5:16, NKJV), and shame, I have come to see, is just the flesh's way of dragging me backward into an old identity instead of forward into the one I already have. Walking in the Spirit is not a technique for feeling less embarrassed about the past. It is staying close enough to the One who already closed that case that the old photo loses its power to reopen it. Even Jesus endured this on our behalf, "who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God" (Hebrews 12:2, NKJV). He did not manage His shame. He despised it, because He could already see the joy waiting on the other side of it. Paul promises the same refusal is available to anyone who calls on Him. "For the Scripture says, 'Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame'" (Romans 10:11, NKJV).
I left the photo up. I did not untag myself, and I did not write anything defensive underneath it either. I just closed the app and said out loud, to an empty bedroom, that the man in that picture is not who I am anymore, and for the first time in years I actually believed my own sentence when I said it. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which old photo just resurfaced in your own life. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on nobody finding the picture, and He will never leave you standing there alone with a verdict He already overturned.
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Scriptures used (NKJV): Romans 8:1; Psalm 103:12; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Isaiah 61:7; Galatians 5:16; Hebrews 12:2; Romans 10:11.
RedeemedExistence daily devotional — September 26, 2026
A notification popped up on my phone Tuesday night, a tag in a photo from twelve years ago, some bar I do not even remember the name of, my arm slung around a man I used to run with back when running meant something closer to ruin than exercise. He must have been digging through an old album, feeling nostalgic about a version of himself he has apparently decided to keep. In the picture I am twenty six pounds heavier, glassy eyed, laughing at something that was probably not funny, and thirty one people had already liked it by the time I saw it. I did not comment or untag myself, though I thought about it. I just sat on the edge of my bed feeling twelve years fall away like they had never happened at all.
I have been sober long enough now that most days I do not think about who I used to be. I go to work, I coach my son's baseball team, people at church know me as the guy who runs the parking lot on Sunday mornings, and none of that is a performance. But a photo like that one has a way of reaching back through the years I have built since and putting its hand on my shoulder, and for about an hour Tuesday night I sat with a familiar feeling I thought I had outgrown, the conviction that the man in that picture is somehow more true about me than the man typing this sentence.
That feeling has a name, and it is shame, and it does not argue fair. Shame does not present evidence and let you weigh it. It declares a verdict and expects you to accept it, the way that photo declared one about me before I had even finished reading the caption. I spent years believing that verdict, certain that whatever grace I found on Sunday would eventually run out once God got a good enough look at what I actually was underneath it. Most of us are carrying some version of that photo, a memory, a mistake, a season we hope nobody brings back up, and we have quietly decided the shame attached to it gets the final word about who we really are.
Paul will not let that verdict stand. "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit" (Romans 8:1, NKJV). Notice he does not say the condemnation was reduced or postponed. He says it is gone, now, for anyone in Christ, which means the moment I trusted Him the old file was not amended, it was closed. I have spent years re-opening a case God already ruled on, as if my own memory had the authority to overturn His verdict.
David describes the actual distance involved. "As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us" (Psalm 103:12, NKJV). East and west never meet, which is a very different picture than a filing cabinet where the old record just sits there, waiting to be pulled back out by a notification on a Tuesday night. Paul says something just as final about the man in that photo. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17, NKJV). Passed away is not the same as covered up. The bar, the arm around my old friend's shoulder, the man laughing at nothing, that whole self actually passed away, and thirty one strangers liking a photo of his corpse does not resurrect him.
Here is where my own reasoning has never been strong enough to finish the job. I can recite the theology of forgiveness perfectly and still feel my stomach drop every time an old photo surfaces, because shame was never actually a logic problem I could argue my way out of. Isaiah promises something my own arguments could never manufacture on their own. "Instead of your shame you shall have double honor, And instead of confusion they shall rejoice in their portion. Therefore in their land they shall possess double; Everlasting joy shall be theirs" (Isaiah 61:7, NKJV). Double honor in place of shame is not a trade I could talk myself into. It has to be given, the way everything in this life that actually heals seems to be given rather than earned.
This is what abiding in the Spirit does that my own willpower never managed in twelve years of trying to outrun old photographs. Paul writes, "I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh" (Galatians 5:16, NKJV), and shame, I have come to see, is just the flesh's way of dragging me backward into an old identity instead of forward into the one I already have. Walking in the Spirit is not a technique for feeling less embarrassed about the past. It is staying close enough to the One who already closed that case that the old photo loses its power to reopen it. Even Jesus endured this on our behalf, "who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God" (Hebrews 12:2, NKJV). He did not manage His shame. He despised it, because He could already see the joy waiting on the other side of it. Paul promises the same refusal is available to anyone who calls on Him. "For the Scripture says, 'Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame'" (Romans 10:11, NKJV).
I left the photo up. I did not untag myself, and I did not write anything defensive underneath it either. I just closed the app and said out loud, to an empty bedroom, that the man in that picture is not who I am anymore, and for the first time in years I actually believed my own sentence when I said it. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which old photo just resurfaced in your own life. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on nobody finding the picture, and He will never leave you standing there alone with a verdict He already overturned.
---
Scriptures used (NKJV): Romans 8:1; Psalm 103:12; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Isaiah 61:7; Galatians 5:16; Hebrews 12:2; Romans 10:11.
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